4:34 AM,
Mar. 16, 2013

Robert Goddard displays his first rocket, which stands in the middle of the frame that he used for his March 16, 1926, launch.

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On July 17, 1969, the day after Apollo 11 was launched and a couple of days before Neil Armstrong made his "small step," The New York Times published a correction of an editorial, "Severe Strain on Credulity," it had written in 1920 mocking Robert Goddard for his assertions that rocket-powered flight could take man to the moon

The Times ridiculed Goddard and the idea that propulsion could occur in a vacuum, saying, "After the rocket quits our air and really starts on its longer journey, its flight would be neither accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left. ...